Search Engine Marketing

Include Social Networking in Your Marketing Mix

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:07:00 GMT

Social networking is a great social media marketing method that should be part of any digital marketing strategy for business. Social networking has been part of the social web for a couple of years and the business connections you can make from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are just too big to ignore anymore.

There are thousands of social networks, each with their own specialty and niche. For example, LinkedIn is a professional network where Facebook is more laid back and casual.

The most effective and best way to utilize social networking in your marketing mix is to choose the ones that matches your targeted market the closest. This will be the network that fits your targeted demographic. Once you have chosen the network channel to use, spend some time to network on the channel and become part of the conversation happening.

Here's a couple of ways you can make the most out of social networking.

Social networking tips

Only choose the social network that includes your targeted demographic and the audience that you would like to reach. There's many small personalized networks available and these ones tends to be easier and faster to connect with.
What goals do you want to accomplish with social networking and who do you want to reach?
Never start a social networking campaign if you are only going to engage with your network occasionally. Always interact and spend some time networking with the people in your network and become part of the group.
Never think you can start a social networking campaign for a quick sale. You should always focus on building relationships.
Meet up with the people in your network to increase the personal interaction and better build business relationships.
Try new things and constantly adjust your approach to get new and better results.
The benefits from social networking comes over a long period. Never expect instant results.

This post was personally sent to us by our good friend and colleague Francois Muscat, a certified Digital Marketing consultant living in South Africa. He is a professional speaker, trainer and consultant and enjoys training people in social media, anywhere in the world.

Digital Marketing Blog

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 23:49:00 GMT

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Google Farmer Algorithm

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:48:00 GMT

No credible Digital Marketing Consultant was surprised.

One of the major components of search engine optimization is content. So like everything else in the SEO industry the “black hat” optimizers immediately started flooding the internet with quickly produced, keyword laden, recycled content in an effort to drive up the page count of their clients.

Did it work? Well sort of…. The techniques for writing search engine friendly copy are the same whether the copy is redundant and valueless to the human reader or if it provides insight and original thought or news or any number of virtues to people seeking information.

Unfortunately this prompted the rise of the “content farming” industry. Companies and individuals who “scraped” content from other websites, rearranged it a little and spit it out as though it was new. If done cleverly the search engines would treat it as original content and reward the website with higher search rankings.

Google counters Bad SEO tactics

Google actually makes hundreds of changes to its search results ranking algorithm each year in an effort to stay a step ahead of black-hat optimizers who use dubious tactics in an effort to “game” the system rather than produce useful content. We knew this change was coming… we just didn’t know when.

Google’s’ "Farmer" algorithm went into effect towards the end of February and affected some 11.8 percent of Google search queries in the United States. The update was presumably aimed at content farms that produce low-quality or recycled content for the purpose of achieving higher search results.

Caught in the fallout?
Certainly anyone who employed an optimizer who relied on dubious shortcuts took a hit. Unfortunately that includes legitimate well intentioned business people who were simply trying to market their services on the Internet like everyone else. They trusted SEO companies that relied on dubious tactics, or off-shore optimizers with a poor command of the English language who simple scraped and assembled content for other websites.
It will probably also affect distributers of products that rely on manufacturers descriptions to advertise the products in their catalogues and in their shopping carts. In many cases there are hundreds of the same descriptions across hundreds of different websites. Google is not going to rank them all for the same thing. Did they do anything wrong? No, but now they are going to have to do it right.

There are no short cuts. There never have been…
Gamming the system has never worked for any length of time. Trying to circumvent Google’s algorithm is short sited and ultimately builds your web presence on a house of cards that collapses the moment Google makes a change.

There are certain things that work, and will always work. A Professional Digital Marketing Firm knows that Google is happy to reward optimizers that play by the rules and consider that the end game is to serve up the most accurate, meaningful and varied results to the person searching for information.

What’s the upside?
Well if you are just a person searching for something on Google, your chances of finding good quality results just increased. If you are a business who employed a skilled “white hat” Search Engine Optimization Company then a lot of the noise on the Internet just cleared out of your way to the top of the results.

And by the way, good quality content is not only original, well optimized by search engine guidelines, but is actually meaningful to the human audience. What good is it to rank high in the search engines for something that reflects well on your company?

Don’t let the “S” in SEO stand for Sucker

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:46:00 GMT

A personal friend of mine...an attorney, told me that he contracted with a search engine optimization company, (let’s call them the “Mellow” Pages) because they claimed to specialize in search engine optimization for personal injury attorneys.

6 thousand dollars later he was asking me why he was getting top rankings on the search results pages, but no additional business.

It didn’t take a forensic pathologist to unravel this mystery. After reviewing the keyword phrases that he contracted for verses the actual results, it was evident that he was simply the victim of a classic bait and switch.

Let me emphasize that my attorney friend…a VERY intelligent guy and a top attorney had absolutely no reason to suspect what would be painfully obvious to an Internet Marketing specialist. He is a very competent attorney…not a digital marketing professional.

Here is how it went down:

He contracted for the following phrases:

Accident Attorney Irvine
Car Accident Lawyer Irvine
Car Accident Lawyers Irvine
Car Accident Attorney Irvine
Personal Injury Lawyer Irvine

Here are the keyword phrases that were actually optimized:

Accident Attorney Irvine California
Car Accident Lawyer Irvine California
Car Accident Lawyers Irvine California
Car Accident Attorney Irvine California
Personal Injury Lawyer Irvine California

Did you notice the difference? Simply by adding one more word (California) to an otherwise legitimate long tail keyword phrase, it turned a very competitive, highly searched on phrase into something easily achievable, but with no discernable ROI.

Let’s take a look at his actual results:

Notice that virtually each phrase with the word “California” at the end of it ranks higher than the same phrase without the State name. Why is that?

Well, by simply searching on both phrases in Google and comparing the amount of search results, I could quickly see that the phrase “car accident attorney irvine California” was approximately 370% less competitive than the version without the word “California” tagged onto the end.

Is that a good thing? Actually your SEO consultant should be looking for less competitive words; that is an essential ingredient to good keyword selection. However those less competitive phrases must also represent a fair amount of searches. At the end of the day I would rather show up for 20% of a thousand searches than zero percent of a Million searches.

If the research showed that by adding the State name at the end of all those phrases resulted in reduced, but significant traffic, then it would have been a sound strategy. In this case people who live in Irvine rarely search on a phrase like “car accident lawyer Irvine California”, however they do search on a phrase like “car accident lawyer Irvine”. The “Mellow” pages simply made it easy on themselves at the expense of their client.

Let’s put this into perspective; every successful business person is good at what they do. There is no reason for anyone to be good in an entirely different industry like digital marketing. I would never review my own contracts, or do my own accounting. Why would I expect a lawyer to be able to interpret the results of a search engine optimization campaign?

So how do you safeguard against unscrupulous Internet marketing practitioners? The same way you would when referencing any company or individual; “Reputation Management”. My best advice is to simply search on: “reviews” + “the individual you are working with” to see what other folks have to say about their experience with that SEO specialist you are considering.

Remember, ethics and skill are mutually exclusive. My instincts tell me that the “Mellow” Pages should have been more trustworthy and accountable, but that was clearly not the case.

How Does Google’s “Quality Score” affect my PPC Performance?

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:42:00 GMT

So you think that if you bid more for a certain keyword than your competitor you will show up higher in the paid search results? Makes sense, but It’s not that simple.

Let’s start off with the premise that the lower your quality score, the more likely you are to pay for a click and the lower your relative positioning on the search results page.

The Google Quality Score is determined by a variety of different factors but I want to focus on only one for now: Click-through-rate (CTR). That is the percentage of the times that your ad has the potential for being seen on the search results, verses the actual times it is clicked on.

Note that I said the “Potential”. That means if you bid too low and are on page 3 of the search results, technically your ad has the “potential” of being viewed… but it is unlikely it will ever be seen or clicked on. Your quality score is updated often. In fact every time your key word has the potential for being viewed that fact is recorded and your score is ultimately recalculated.

Why does Google do this? They tell us it is their way to help serve up the most relevant results. Since CTR is only one factor in the Quality Score that affects user experience, I’m certain this is valid. However I believe there is also an economic component to this.

Let’s do the math:

Suppose your competitor is paying $2.00 per click for a certain keyword, and on average they get about 100 clicks each day. Google would make $200 per day.

Suppose you are also willing to pay $2.00 per click for that same keyword, but you only average 50 clicks per day. You only made Google $100, whereas your competitor makes them $200. Google likes them better…

Suppose that you are willing to pay more per click to show up above them in the search results, but you still only get 50 clicks per day. How much more do you have to raise your bid before the economics work out in Google’s favor?

What are some of the factors that affect CTR?

Positioning on the search results: Generally the higher you show up in the search results, the more clicks you will get. That does NOT necessarily mean that you are getting a better ROI.
Relevance of the ad to the keyword being searched on: If you are using an “all purpose” ad for a bunch of seemingly unrelated keywords, less people will click on your ad because it doesn’t appear to meet their search requirements.
Quality of the ad: The more intriguing the ad, the better chance you will spark the searcher’s interest and earn a visit.
Brand recognition: If your brand is more recognizable, you stand a better chance of getting that click.

Remember, every time that you search on your keyword to see where you rank and you don’t click on your own ad, your quality score just suffered a little bit. I’m not suggesting that you actually click on the ad yourself (you don’t get a discount from Google because it’s your ad). I am suggesting that you trust your reporting metrics, or enlist a PPC management professional to monitor performance and make adjustments accordingly.

Not All Links are Created Equal

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:43:00 GMT

Search Engines evaluate who is linking to your website to determine how relevant your website is within your industry. Pages that are linked to more frequently are weighted higher by search engines and are more likely to be visited.

Inbound links or “back links” are considered a vote of confidence for your website. Therefore getting “quality links” is an integral part of ranking higher than your competitors on the search engines.

Quality Links:

Come from popular websites in a related industry.
Links from higher ranking pages are worth more than miscellaneous links.
Links that appear higher up in a page are more valuable than links that appear on the bottom of the page in the footer.
Pages that have large numbers of links may be diluted and less authoritative.
“Anchor Text” matters. The actual words that link to your webpage are important. For example, linking the phrase “internet marketing orange county” to my website is more effective for me than linking the words “Click Here”.

Where do Quality Links come from?
Sadly there is no silver bullet. A certain amount of links will develop naturally over time, but unless you have a very popular site to begin with, playing the waiting game won’t work. Buying links for a link farm typically doesn’t work well either. Those links are typically low quality and can get you into trouble over the long run due to their dubious source.

The first step (the only step I’m going to cover in this post) is to locate sources of quality links. I want to focus on the low hanging fruit:

Websites that already link to you
Websites that link to your competitors

In each case it is safe to assume that websites that link to you or your competitors probably link to sites that are relevant to you. Because those sites are relevant to your market, it is safe to assume that sites that link to THEM are also relevant to you and are probably also good link prospects.

There are a variety of methods for tracking down specific links to your site and to the sites of your competitors. The most efficient method is to use professional software that is designed for that specific task. Two that we user are Wordtracker and Web CEO. Keep in mind that there is a learning curve to use them correctly. There is also the associated expense of purchasing the tools, and the time to follow through with the results. I’ll cover that on an upcoming post.

What is a Long Tailed Keyword… and why do I want one?

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:43:00 GMT

No the keyword “alligator” would not qualify… unless of course you sold alligators. Even then that single word is not what I am referring to.

“alligator shoes” is better, but not quite the long tail I was looking for. How about “alligator shoes for women”? Now we’re heading in the right direction….

Long Tail Keywords are search phrases that combine 3 or more words. They will get fewer clicks, but they are typically less competitive (facilitating higher page positioning) and more targeted, resulting in a higher conversion rate.

Let’s take something that I am a little more familiar with: “website marketing”. If you were to search on that single keyword you wouldn’t be alone. That word does get a lot of hits, but not everyone with the word “website” on their website has anything to do with website marketing. Your search results would turn up websites that promote:

Website Design
Website Hosting
Website portfolios
Nothing to do with anything
Etc.

“website marketing” is better, but still awful competitive, and not nearly as targeted as it can be. Although my staff and I work with companies all over the Country, people have a tendency to geotarget their searches. Therefore “website marketing california” would be more appropriate for me. There would be fewer searches, but the quality of those searches would be much better.

“website marketing company orange county” is about as long-tailed as you want to get. The number of search results that I am competing with goes down from about 192 million for “website marketing” to fewer than 300 thousand, AND I can be assured that whoever is doing the searching is targeting someone in my area for a reason.

There are 4 things that I want you to take away from this article:

For every word that you add to your keyword phrase, there will be fewer searches conducted.
For every word that you add to your keyword phrase, there will be fewer competitors in the search results.
For every word that you add to your keyword phrase, there is one more opportunity to target your service or location.
No alligators were harmed during the posting of this blog

At the end of the day, I would rather have 5% of the traffic from 300,000 searches than 0% of the traffic from 192 million searches.

SEO Programs v. SEO Events

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:44:00 GMT

One-time search engine optimizations are rarely effective unless they are for a localized “niche” or non-competitive market that is tightly geo-targeted (like a chiropractor doing business in a single town). Just putting your meta-tags into the code is still considered industry best practice, but in actuality has very little influence on how search engines rank you.

Search engines now take a very holistic approach to how they view the significance of a website and how they will rank it. Directory listings, Social media, Customer reviews are all part of the mix now. If I were to list all of the factors on this post it would turn into an eBook, so I want to focus on a few of the “big chunks” that are foundational:

Content: Search engines look for lots of balanced content. Their theory is the more content about a certain subject, the more of an authority you must be. It is not just sheer quantity of copy (although that is a factor), but the quality of the copy which has more impact. The search engines look at “keyword Density” or the ratio of keyword usage to total volume. The content has to be written very specifically and focus on no more than 1-3 keywords maximum.
Internal Linking Structure: Search Engines want to be able to “spider” the entire website by following the links from one page to another. We use a “silo” structure to leverage all the focus onto the Home page or landing page. Although I have to admit that recently even these pages are starting to rank independently (so they have to be more than SEO pages, they have to be marketing pages as well).
External Linking: The theory is “the more people who link to you, the more of an authority you must be”. Each link is essentially a vote for your website. However not all links are factored in. only quality links really move the needle. Quality links are links from other high ranking websites and directories. Reciprocal links (linking back and forth to each other) do not count nearly as much. They don’t hurt, but they don’t help as much as you think.
Consistency: Search engines reward consistency and penalize blatant attempts to manipulate them. This is a major factor in why one-time optimization events are largely ineffective. If you suddenly flooded your website with content and links that appear to come out of nowhere, the search engines will find that unnatural and flag you.

We typically put together a “content blueprint” that actually defines what is to be done and when. How many pages of content, how many blog postings, how many incoming links will be solicited, how many customer reviews we can cultivate, etc.

If you need instant traffic, turn to Pay-Per-Click (PPC), it’s the fastest surest technique for driving traffic. If you want long-term value, be prepared to engage in a Search Engine Optimization program, not just a SEO event.

PPC and SEO: Teaming up for Results

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:24:00 GMT

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are two different strategies for achieving the same result: driving targeted traffic to your website. There is a common misconception that these strategies are independent of each other, often resulting in a search engine marketer relying completely on method at the expense of the other. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. PPC drives faster results in terms of pure traffic because you have a tremendous amount of control over everything from the placement to exactly how the search result will appear to the searcher.

The disadvantage of PPC lies in its reliance in one specific factor… your advertising budget. The less money you spend… the less traffic you get. SEO on the other hand is the most cost-effective, long-term solution because after the initial optimization (and some on gong maintenance) your site could benefit from free traffic for an extended period of time. The challenge wit h SEO is that it requires a huge amount of initial research, diagnostics and optimizations to be successful. Even then SEO results are unpredictable because search engines are constantly updating their algorithms, and your competitors may be launching similar efforts to pursue those coveted top spots on the search results pages.

The contrasting differences between SEO and PPC can be leveraged into a comprehensive online marketing campaign. In fact, we often use PPC to monitor the results to help us with our keyword research to prepare our SEO program. With the help of a professional who knows how to leverage both strategies you should be able to drive long-term, cost effective SEO traffic and immediate, targeted paid traffic.

Best And Worst Industries For Paid Search

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 22:57:00 GMT

Not all industries are appropriate for paid search. Rather than just provide a list of optimum industries, I wanted to focus on the concept on why some industries provide a better ROI than others.

As a general rule, service industries typically provide the best opportunity for ROI. There are however some exceptions where eCommerce websites perform extremely well. Let’s take 2 examples:

Example of a Good choice:
One of our clients sell gourmet mushroom products. This performs extremely well. Why? Two reasons:

The average customer orders are enough to more than compensate for the total costs per click. That typically means that either the margins are high enough to absorb the clicks that don’t result in a purchase, or the sales volume or conversion rate makes up for the cliks that don’t result in a sale.
Because this is a unique product where the consumer only has so many choices, there is a lifetime values to a new customer. That is; once someone finds this store the first time, there is a lifetime of repeat business that will never cost anything again once the customer has been introduced to the website.

Example of a Poor choice:
One of our clients wanted to run a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign to sell laser print cartridges. A few simple questions and a quick analysis determined that would be a losing proposition. Why?

The average profit on a sale was about $12.00 - $14.00. Suppose the average cost per click (CPC) was $2.00 and the conversion rate was 10% (one out of every 10 visitors made a purchase). That means that the vendor would spend about $20.00 to make about $14.00 ( a net loss of about $6.00).

Does that mean that all eCommerce sites are not good candidates for paid search? No… suppose that the majority of those print cartridges were sold in bulk. Then a single click could result in hundreds of dollars in sales.

Conversely, suppose the margin on a single item was extremely high. For example, auto dealerships routinely use PPC to sell cars off their lots. You don’t buy cars online, but you do research on line. A single purchase more than makes up for the investment.

Summary:
When deciding if paid search is a good strategy for an eCommerce site, ask yourself these questions:

Are the margins high enough?
Is the potential volume high enough?
Is there a lifetime value to a new customer